East Africa: Making Conservation Pay

Though he looks like a Beatle with his shaggy hair and steel-rimmed glasses. Harvey Croze, 28, is concerned only with the music of the forest. The Oxford-trained zoologist has spent the past three years listening to and looking at elephants in Tanzania's Serengeti National Park. He explains his passion for pachyderms: "The elephant is second only to man as a modifier of ecology. He has been around for 15 million years and is the biggest land mammal, but we hardly know anything about him."

Croze, a member of the Serengeti Research Institute, has plenty of company in his pursuit of knowledge about how the animals of East Africa interact with their environment. He is one of 79 American and European wildlife scientists now working at research stations in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda; never has the region hosted so many experts of this kind. Financed by governments, foundations and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the scientists are striving to conserve the world's largest reservoir of wildlife. Decades of indifference and exploitation have driven some species, such as the cheetah and the wild Somalia ass, to the brink of extinction. Africa's burgeoning population and the land hunger of many citizens in the newly independent nations continue to reduce the territory available for animals.

Elephant Stress. Serengeti's 5,600 square miles and the surrounding 10,000 square miles are home to an estimated 1,500,000 big game animals--as many as roam the rest of Africa combined--but the lush woodland is being turned increasingly into savannah. Neighboring farmers burn off trees to create pasture land, elephants topple trees. It had been believed previously that the elephants felled trees simply for food. Croze argues that the real reason is a destructive urge born of overcrowding. Other scientists believe that, as elephants are driven into the park for refuge, their overall number is decreasing. In Uganda, elephants in overcrowded parks have begun to develop heart conditions because of stress. The hartebeest population in Nairobi National Park is growing so fast that males must fight frequently for territory, thus disrupting their feeding habits. Even worse, because the national parks are not ecological units, there is no balance between food and animal number, predator and prey.

Merely to argue for the preservation of park land is not enough. Says Hugh Lamprey, director of the Serengeti Research Institute: "It may be unrealistic to ask the various African governments concerned to keep the parks for the amenity of the rest of the world. They might begin to think that the Serengeti could be better used in other ways. We hope to provide the scientific knowledge with which to conserve it."

This knowledge, many scientists working in East Africa feel, may be the last hope for African wildlife. It can be used, first, to convince local governments that, if properly exploited, wildlife can earn their keep--and even turn a profit. Indeed, as a tourist attraction, game preserves already generate $50 million annually in Kenya. Since tourism is Kenya's second largest money earner (after agriculture), park land there is worth nearly as much per acre as the finest agricultural land.

Game Ranching. Another avenue is to ranch animals for their meat, fur and other products. This makes solid economic sense, because the meat-producing capability of East Africa is greater than that of any other natural region in the world. The ranching of certain herbivores would also help preserve the land. Antelopes, for example, eat more kinds of food than cattle and consequently do not damage grasslands as much. They also use less food and water than do domesticated animals, while providing just as much meat.

Some efforts to ranch herbivores have begun, albeit slowly. Tribesmen who live in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro have moved their cattle in order to save the area from overgrazing and give wild animals a chance to retrieve their natural habitat. Tanzania is marketing wild game for human consumption, while Kenya is considering the development of ranches for the commercial sale of cattle and wild animals. Even these small gains are being threatened. In Tanzania's Ngorongoro wildlife preserve, land has been opened for cattle grazing. In other preserves, tourists, and the facilities required to support them, pose a serious threat to the animals' environment.

Herding by Satellite. In the face of these challenges, the scientists are intensifying their push to try to understand wildlife environment. They are using tranquilizer guns to immobilize animals so as to fit them with radio-equipped collars. Once freed, the animals can be tracked for days, even weeks. Tiny sensors have been implanted in tranquillized animals to check their temperature, heart beat, blood flow, blood pressure and breathing.

Some scientists would even like to utilize space technology. Michael Sabbagh, a Texas University geographer who has just returned from Kenya, says that NASA satellites could take a daily "picture" of game preserves to allow scientists to monitor the movements of herds swiftly and accurately. Since different species produce different amounts of body heat, says Sabbagh, satellites equipped with infra-red cameras could distinguish between one kind of animal and another. With satellite-provided information, scientists would immediately be able to determine animals' responses to environmental changes, as well as their adaptation to their habitat.

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